VICTORIOUS LOVE
LESSON FOR JUNIORS
Study Scripture: Genesis 42
Lesson 3 September 19, 2020
Key Verse
“Any they said unto him, Nay, my lord, but to buy food are thy servants come.
We are all one man’s sons; we are true men, thy servants are no spies.
Genesis 42: 10-11
INTRODUCTION
Unfortunately sometimes life can be a little sad. In our study we are looking at a divided family where there is a lot of envy, infighting, and lack of love.
But sometimes people in that kind of family show a remarkable character. We look at one of those people today and his name was Joseph. Evil was done to him but he did not repay those that did those things to him but depended on God to keep him from harm.
So we start by asking you if you have ever been a victim of something bad happening. Do you feel justified in doing something evil back in response?
If somebody does something wrong against you, it’s easy to feel like it is OK to do something against them in return.
When you are a victim of unacceptable and evil such as bullying it often leads to those same victims of bullying becoming doers of evil.
We see it all the time among our friends. One of the kids will hit another one. You walk out to them and tell them “Don’t hit”. But the guys will answer something like “But he yelled at me”. Or they might say “She took my toy”.
You will probably then answer using the phrase, “Two wrongs don’t make a right”.
In this story from the Book of Genesis we are told of a 17 year old young man named Joseph who was the favourite son of his father and the father found out that he was so well-behaved that he made him something like a supervisor over his older brothers. The father gave him a coat of many colors, something beautiful and unique.
Joseph loved his brothers and his father, but the brothers envied and hated him especially when he had a dream that they were in the field and he had a bunch of corn and his brothers’ bunch of corn somehow bowed down to his bunch of corn. That made his older brothers hate him even more for there is no way that they and whatever they had would bow down to their younger brother. So one day they had an opportunity to grab Joseph when nobody was looking and they planned to kill him but instead they sold Joseph to some slave traders going to Egypt for 20 shekels of silver. The slave traders dragged Joseph away from where his father’s house was and in Egypt they sold him to a important official who wanted a slave to look after his house. This was bad business.
Then another bad thing happened to Joseph again for he was unfairly accused by his Master’s wife of doing something wrong to her and the Master threw him in prison. But throughout all this trouble God was with him and protected and blessed him.
He was promoted in prison to be in charge of all the prisoners. When he was in prison he met some officials that the king of Egypt had thrown into prison. These men had a dream and they did not know what the dream meant but God told Joseph what the dream meant. God had given him that special ability and Joseph told them what their dreams meant. The interpretation of the dream was dead on and the men were very happy and promised that when they came out of prison they would help Joseph and get him freed. But of course they forgot their promise.
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But God stepped in and worked it out. The king of Egypt had a dream that terrified him and nobody could interpret the dream. Then the official that had met Joseph when he was in prison told the king named Pharaoh that Joseph could interpret his dream. They hurriedly got Joseph out of prison to meet the king. Joseph interpreted King’s dream perfectly and the king was so happy that he appointed Joseph to look after the affairs of Egypt, to collect the great amount of crops that the people would grow and arrange to store them so that when a great famine came the people of Egypt would have food.
The famine was bad all over the land and the people everywhere were starving to death. Joseph’s father who did not know what had happened to Joseph, for the brothers had told him a big lie that an animal had killed Joseph, sent his sons that have sold Joseph into slavery to go down to Egypt to buy food. Joseph recognized them but after 20 years he had grown up and changed a lot and they did not recognize him. He was now a big and important official in Egypt and dressed up like a powerful ruler. They bowed down to Joseph just as his dream had predicted.
Joseph had power and in revenge he could have got his brothers killed right away. That would have served them right. But Joseph was not like that. He still loved his brothers and his father no matter what had happened to him.
He treated them harshly and questioned them accusing them of being spies but what he really wanted to do was to find out if they had changed and become better people. He even threw them in prison for three days to soften them up and make them realize the terrible sin that they had committed. Joseph questioned them and found out that his father and his younger brother named Benjamin was still alive Joseph desperately wanted to see his father and his younger brother and Joseph set up a plan to bring his younger brother now to see him. Later he would bring his father down to live with him in Egypt. Joseph arranged everything to make his big brothers uncomfortable and remember the terrible thing that they had done 20 years before.
They realized what they had done wrong. They felt very guilty. They talked among themselves that maybe the bad thing that was happening to them was because of what they had done to do to Joseph. They did not know that Joseph was listening to them while they were talking among themselves for they did not recognize Joseph for he had changed as he grew older.
With the help of God Joseph became victorious over any bad feelings he had because his brothers had done something terrible to him. His love was so strong that it was victorious over any desire for revenge. He did not have any bad feelings and did not want to take revenge on his brothers. He wanted to help them rather than hurt them. God had helped him overcome. God will do the same thing for you.
So the lesson is that we must not always want TO HIT BACK and take revenge. We have to learn to leave that to God. We must not let unpleasant things done to us to be an excuse to do evil in return. Refuse to do evil things and God will support you and reward you. Joseph was a great example of how to behave.